1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to print-on-demand (POD) document management, and in particular, it relates to using barcode for POD document management.
2. Description of Related Art
In a POD project, document identification (ID) is often utilized to manage the published documents. The documents may be a compilation of works assembled into a book or booklet, or a single document having multiple pages, etc. They can be published on paper as traditional hard-copy document, or in an electronic format (such as the portable document format or PDF) as an e-copy document which can be transmitted over a computer network or stored in a database.
It is often desirable in a POD project to keep certain information, such as book related information, registration information, order information, etc., for tracking and other management purposes. One of the approaches is to put these information in a barcode and print it on each page, so that for a printed book, or for even just a page of a book, certain information is readily available, e.g., whether the book is allowed to be reprinted, where does the page come from, etc. However, to keep all such information in one barcode, the barcode may be too big and takes too much space on a page which makes the page look less appealing, especially when a barcode is printed on every page.